A grim anniversary

This contemptuous antipathy is, mysteriously, reserved only for those who arrive by boat. There are real illegals who arrive by plane, with visas, and then overstay, blending into the general population. These apparently are of no concern at all to the anti asylum seeker cohort, even though there are many thousands of them who never declare themselves.

Plane arrivals who overstay are guilty of transgressing borders and violating sovereignty. However, boat arrivals immediately declare themselves, and request asylum. Boat arrivals go through the proper channels. Thousands and thousands of over-stayers who arrive by plane do not.

While 55% of refugee applications from those arriving by plane are rejected, between only 2% and 15% of those arriving by boat are found to fail the requirements for resettlement.

In 2001, asylum seekers arriving by boat were as blank pages, upon which government and media could and did write a story, a story that had and still has very little relevance to the people themselves. Many of them arrived sans papiers, and stateless. In the absence of a documented identity, any identity could be created for them, manipulated by politicians for public consumption.

Boat arrivals are seen as violating a nation in which the concept of nationhood resonates with a sense of entitled and sacred inviolability. However, national boundaries are defined by the principles of inclusion and exclusion. They are social constructs, having everything to do with political expediency and human intervention. There is nothing in the least sacred about borders.

Boat arrivals were, and are, constructed as the perilous other within the nation state.

Boat arrivals provoke fears of an aesthetic and cultural annihilation that will inevitably (it is threatened) entail the subjugation of customs and norms that are understood as naturally Australian. This is a preposterous notion, given the range of ethnically diverse groups already thriving in Australia, most of whom were vilified and rejected when they first arrived.

Of course, the churches had their say. Anglican Dean Philip Jensen advised his flock in 2003 that any beliefs other than Christian are "…the monstrous lies and deceits of Satan designed to destroy the life of the believers…" This did not, at the time, encourage a benevolent view of Muslim asylum seekers. John Howard then revealed a few days later that he and Jensen communicated on a regular basis on "moral issues," and the inference was made that Jensen's view might have influenced Howard's stance on the non Christian boat arrivals.

Nothing unites a community like the external threat of a common enemy. In 2001, Senator Ross Lightfoot referred to the boat people as "uninvited and repulsive peoples whose sordid list of behaviours included scuttling their own boats." (Human Rights Watch Report, 2003). Disparate Australian communities, at times dwelling in uneasy peace, and sometimes refugees themselves from an earlier time, were offered a common enemy. The Howard government, following the lead of Pauline Hanson, tapped a deep vein of racist hostility in the Australian character across the board.

There is little likelihood of any change in attitudes in the near future. Those opposed to boat arrivals will continue to publicly demonstrate their disapproval in ways that sicken. We will continue to be a country in which it is acceptable for radio stations to run competitions about the burial of drowned foreign babies.

Politicians will continue to lead the charge, as Scott Morrison so ably demonstrated on the matter of the funeral costs. Asylum seekers will continue to fulfil the role of scapegoat that is apparently so essential to defining an Australian sense of identity.

In this country, it seems, and sadly, we still need to define ourselves against who we are not, rather than who we are. The foreigner serves this defining purpose for us, and always has. It was Greeks, or Italians, or Lebanese, or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or Irish, hell, I remember as a little girl being screamed at in the playground for being a pommy. "Go home pommy" was regularly scrawled in the dust on our family car.

And sadly, politicians see far too much to be gained in maintaining the lies than addressing the truth. There is no need for this divisive destruction they work to feed in their relentless pursuit of power. Address our international obligations, and our domestic law, and we will cease to be a country that accepts all asylum seekers. Then the boats will stop, and we can stop pretending to be a hospitable nation that locks up those who don't know we don't want them.